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Most Common Letters of the Alphabet - Whammies

Type the 10 most common letters in the English language. Three mistakes ends the quiz.
Based on nearly 10,000 books from Project Gutenberg. Source.
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: January 5, 2025
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First submittedJanuary 5, 2025
Times taken38,098
Average score70.0%
Rating4.55
1:30
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%
Letter
12.6
E
9.1
T
8.0
A
7.6
O
6.9
I
%
Letter
6.9
N
6.3
S
6.2
H
6.0
R
4.3
D
36 Comments
+17
Level 66
Jan 7, 2025
Nice quiz!

Just a suggestion, could the whammy icon be redesigned since it really isn't clear what they are. Perhaps they could be a pixelated heart?

+8
Level 59
Jan 7, 2025
Agreed. For a non Jetpunker, they may be confusing
+14
Level 67
Jan 7, 2025
For a Jetpunker, it can also be confusing
+5
Level 59
Jan 7, 2025
Nah, you just learn
+5
Level 67
Jan 8, 2025
Well, as a JetPunker, hearts would be nice...
+10
Level 86
Jan 7, 2025
They appear to be some kind of hybrid between a space invader and the Tivo logo.
+2
Level 71
Jan 9, 2025
I agree: a heart would make sense.
+4
Level 47
Jan 7, 2025
Great quiz! I had all the letters except for the last one and I used up all my "Whammies".
+2
Level 77
Jan 7, 2025
No U? And H? Has Big Scrabble been conning us this whole time?
+6
Level 88
Jan 7, 2025
H is in there? U did surprise me as well.
+5
Level 83
Jan 7, 2025
"ETAOIN SHRDLU"

(in that order)

+2
Level 67
Jan 8, 2025
The most common English word is "the", causing H to be higher up.
+1
Level 75
Jan 14, 2025
Came here to say the same thing! Once I remembered that, the quiz was a gimme.
+6
Level 47
Jan 7, 2025
The way I learned it as a child, for purposes of code breaking, was, in order of frequency in normal english TEXT...

ETAONRISHDLFMUGY...and then the rest ending in X Q and Z in some order.

This has always served me well in any puzzles or trivia that involves letter frequency.

Scrabble is a bit off from this, since scrabble deals with WORDS, and in particular, CROSS ATTACHED words--not ENGLISH TEXT.

+1
Level 69
Jan 14, 2025
I got N because I know it's very common in Scrabble.
+1
Level 69
Jan 7, 2025
Second featured whammy quiz?
+1
Level 69
Jan 7, 2025
Is this a new quiz type? Or is it using the mechanics of a different quiz type?
+3
Level 67
Jan 8, 2025
It's additional mechanics to a text quiz. You can use whammies as type-ins, so if the player types a specific word, they will lose a life.
+1
Level 69
Jan 8, 2025
Its been here for a month or two
+2
Level 75
Jan 8, 2025
Second featured quiz with the word whammy(ies) in the title, yes. But this quiz was the first to feature whammies, ushering in its first introduction in late November.
+3
Level 77
Jan 8, 2025
i don't know if this can be changed per quiz or it's a feature of whammies in general, but i don't think entering the same whammy twice should lose you two lives - at least, not for this quiz. you haven't got three wrong answers, you've just typed one again by mistake (and here that's just one character so a lot easier to do) - maybe you haven't understood the rules, or missed the little symbol.

and you could argue that being vigilant to that sort of thing is part of the quiz, so i'm interested to hear what others would say, but to me it feels overly harsh

+1
Level 57
Jan 9, 2025
Best time 1 second
+1
Level 36
Jan 9, 2025
2 seconds first try :) i have memorized the order bc i play hangman a lot with my friend
+5
Level 90
Jan 9, 2025
Wheel of Fortune helped me, but it also gave me one whammy! ;)
+1
Level 38
Jan 10, 2025
got 'em all, but on second try
+2
Level 67
Jan 10, 2025
I missed HRD. Because this quiz is hard.
+1
Level 69
Jan 14, 2025
The and and helped me through this quiz.
+2
Level 74
Jan 14, 2025
All letters of the alphabet are equally common... they all appear in it once...
+1
Level 50
Jan 14, 2025
Great quiz - thank you
+1
Level 65
Jan 14, 2025
I hate this new "whammy" thing...
+1
Level 19
Jan 14, 2025
9/10 fun
+2
Level 73
Jan 14, 2025
5 seconds, no whammies. Knowing Etaoin shrdlu! is useful for solving cryptograms and interesting for anyone passingly interested in publishing history.
+1
Level 37
Jan 14, 2025
I misread the title, though it said words, and typed in The and got them all
+1
Level 65
Jan 14, 2025
At last! My memorization of ETAOINSHRDLU forty years ago in typography class has come in handy!
+1
Level 46
Jan 15, 2025
i just did all vowels and the wheel of fortune bonus round letters
+1
Level 67
Jan 15, 2025
I should always remember to read the description XD

Thought M, L, G, P would appear in more words than H but it's based on recurrence in text. I think M is the most common in the title of this quiz!